Jail Guard Admits Sex With Prisoner

An Orange County jail guard retired Thursday after admitting she had sex with an inmate.

Kathryn King, 51, turned in her retirement papers after the 29-year-old inmate and his new girlfriend accused her of harassing the woman, jail records show.

''Corrections officers are not supposed to fraternize in any way,'' said county Corrections Division spokesman Allen Moore.

The affair that cost King her $34,000-a-year job began last spring. She met inmate Rodney Davis while she supervised him at the Work Release Center on Lucerne Terrace in Orlando.

Davis was serving a sentence of 357 days after being convicted in January of selling and delivering cocaine.

Davis was sent to the barless work-release center that houses about 165 male and female inmates, corrections records show.

The records do not address what attracted King, a 15-year corrections veteran, to Davis, a repeat drug offender.

King could not be reached for comment.

On June 12, Davis joined the county's day-reporting program that let him live at home and only report once a day at the center, records show. The lovers met days later, records show.

''Approximately Father's Day weekend, Ms. King and I met downtown at the train station as she told me she had a gift for me,'' Davis wrote in a sworn statement last week. ''She told me the gift was at her house . . . She showed me around her house, all the different rooms, until we finally came to her bedroom.''

On Monday, King admitted in a sworn statement that she had sex with Davis. She also gave him a condolence card that day for his grandmother's recent death, corrections records show.

Their illicit relationship continued after Davis returned to live in the work-release center after being disciplined over a July 2 fight. King admitted further violating the county's fraternization policy by giving Davis clothes and cash, jail officials said.

Things soured after July 31 when Felicia Graham, 25, arrived at the center to serve nine months for resisting arrest with violence. When she and Davis became lovers, King became hostile, Graham wrote in her sworn statement.

''I told her she had a problem with me because we were involved in a relationship and that we were sleeping together,'' Graham wrote. She and Davis reported King to supervisors Oct. 10.

Moore said neither Davis nor Graham have been disciplined. Inmates can have sex as long as it's not in the county-run facility where they live or while at work.

''We suspect if there was any sexual activity between the two it happened off property,'' Moore said. ''It's very unlikely anything occurred here because they are so closely supervised.''